John van Wyhe, Fellow, National University of Singapore; Researcher, History & philosophy of science, Cambridge University

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) was founded in
1831, based loosely on the German Gesellschaft deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte.
The BAAS was ostensibly to perform what its name conveys, the promotion of science
in Britain. In the 1830s science was still quite a private affair. There was
no governmental, educational, or industrial support infrastructure for science
as would later become standard. It soon became one of the main public arenas
for the discussion of scientific matters. The BAAS met every year in a different
provincial city. Its meetings became major events. The yearly meetings were
divided into sections for mathematical physics, geology, natural history, and
so forth. The presidential addresses
became a major venue for pronouncements on science from the self-proclaimed
elite 'parliament of science'. Soon the BAAS came under the control of London
elites although still purportedly a nationally decentralized organization. These
elite men of science used the organization to promote their own version of science
as safe, orthodox, religiously respectable, and politically dependable.

Further reading

Morrell, Jack and Arnold Thackray. Gentlemen of science: early years of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science Oxford, 1981.

Basalla, George, William Coleman, and Robert H. Kargon, eds. Victorian Science:
A Self-portrait from the Presidential Addresses of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science. Garden City, N.Y., 1970.